GWT for Business - and thus relying on Google?

how can businesses choose GWT as their strategic toolkit to render web pages?
In my opinion such investments are dangerous, because I would not say that Google drives a continous business. indeed, they are very innovative and not afraid to try something new.

But they also don't hesitate to take projects off, if they don't succeed or at least not as much Google would like them to do.
Google Wave was a nice example for that.

So can I recommend GWT to clients, although its continuation may be in question - or is GWT already mature enough for business, even if it wouldn't be brought further by google?

In my experience, I've worked with different companies, and used GWT for their main applications. The server side can be done either with RPC or SOA, and it's pure Java, so there shouldn't be problems there.

I feel that Google Wave was dropped, because they couldn't drum up interest for it. As to GW, it's mature enough for current browsers -- but of course whenever a major new version comes up, you may need a new GWT release. (This is mainly because of the different implementations of the HTML standard.) On the other hand, being an Open Source project, I don't think GWT would just be dropped and not continued, even by different people.

So:
* I do think it can be used for business
* There may be a risk of Google eventually dropping it
* The risk isn't so high with OSS

I've heard of version 2.1 (there's now a "Milestone" one, for testing) and also read something about 3.0 -- so I'd say we're safe for now!

Great fan of Open Source, Linux, and web development with GWT; all of these come together for my ESSENTIAL GWT book!

Federico Kereki wrote:On the other hand, being an Open Source project, I don't think GWT would just be dropped and not continued, even by different people.

This is key, I think, and what differentiates GWT from Wave. With GWT there's no server (or anything else from Google) you'd need. Even if they remove everything GWT-related from the servers today, you'd still have all you need to develop and distribute GWT-based solutions.